Chapter 11 – Seven times down, eight times up

Oi. What kind of joke is this, kami?

I didn't ask to escape, only to be nabbed from the side of a meandering path and be captured as a slave.

What do you want from me?

It felt strangely nostalgic, being tied up, again, now in a moving carriage of people. All of which were girls or women, when I swept the dark, dank space with the bright-eye jutsu.

…only females?

I didn't like where this was going in the slightest; frankly I could bust out right here, right now with my nifty temporary physical ability boost and rip right out of these flimsy bonds of rope, but that wouldn't help these poor souls being shipped to who-knows-where.

Especially that sad adorable little chibi that sat in the innermost corner of the cart.

Damnit, I knew I had a soft spot for cute things.

This also felt weirdly personal, being in such a cramped space with people who were going to suffer the same fate. It just didn't feel right; they all had that look in eyes, the visage of someone who has already given up on whatever freedom they had.

I figure that wherever this is going, there will be more people who are in similar situations like this; be it kidnapped or blackmailed.

…damnit, whatever. I'll just deal with the fallout afterwards; time to prepare for the inevitable conflict I guess. I never really was somebody who sat down and did nothing; if there was something to do, I would do it. I stand by my words.

"Do you know where we are going?" I murmured to the woman who sat next to me, her slightly larger appearance indicating that she was at least a few years older than me, with tanned skin and caramel brown eyes.

She turned her weary gaze upon me, then sighed.

"You're unlucky, hun. We're all on the highway to hell."

Well I certainly was, with what my profession was, but I wasn't about to tell this woman about my real identity.

"Cool yeah, great, where to?" My dismissive tone caused her to stare in shock at my reaction. Not a surprise since mere slave drivers shouldn't be a problem for a genin; they even get missions to exterminate whole camps of bandits sometimes!

"You ain't afraid of anything, aren'tcha?" she cackled, a smile spreading across her face, "the name's Suzu. You?"

"Mayue, and as I was saying-"

"The Land of Water. Kirigakure. We were," she spat this part out, loud enough for everyone to hear, but not one person reacted. "Sold, ha, what a joke. We were sold to the Gato Corporation."

Gato. Gato. Ga-to.

…who was Gato again? Kinda remember his name floating around somewhere in my memories, give me a moment.

…

Ah, that guy! The slime ball that tried to scam Zabuza and Haku! He was, what, the head of a big company that was a bit too cocky and got killed?

Well, in any case, I'll just see what's up at the next stop and take actions as necessary.

Piece of scum, I say, selling slaves. Ugh.

"You aight, Mayue-san?"

I gave the default Uchiha affirmative #3; a slightly higher pitched 'Hn'. And yes; the Uchiha have so many different 'Hn's that they need numbers to keep track of all of them. One adept at Uchihanese is truly a diligent student or is a real Uchiha.

"Let me introduce ya to the rest of the lot," she grinned with not much vigor, but it was enough to brighten the mood in the cart. "Now, this little tyke is called…"

The rest of the trip was as uneventful as you'd think in a secure and guarded envoy. That's right, the little punk had bought guards to prevent any escapes from happening, and what's more, they were also real shinobi. Well, just genin, but you know; once you have your hitai-ate, you were a real ninja, or so they said.

Still don't understand the alcohol law in the Elemental Nations.

Anyhow, apparently we were escorted to a small settlement not too far off from Kirigakure, according to the not-so-subtle whispering of the genin whinging on about how long this mission took.

The image of professionalism, I'm sure.

We were then unceremoniously thrown into a large cage-esque room, complete with literally nothing. No, I mean bareboned to the extreme, absolutely nothing apart from the four walls of metal bars and the unyielding straw mats beneath.

I also really did not like the looks that the predominantly male population of the camp sent towards us. Yeah, scrap that, I'm moving the plan forwards to tonight. I worry that if I act too late, we will collectively be very screwed.

…pun not intended.

The lecherous grins that the men guarding the cell as they uncuffed us from the chafing bonds of rope were unsettling to say the least.

Thank kami we were unbound; it would make the plan a lot harder to execute with people being immobile and such. I had got a rough map of the place from looking at where we moved within the camp and had subtly recorded the directions with my eye-camera-thing.

Kishimoto must've been high on something when making this hax eyes thing; it was so unfair it was laughable. Well, not that having a dōjutsu made you all powerful; Naruto had beaten down that kind of ideology countless times in the anime and manga. No need for me to be arrogant or get a big head over having an advantage over other people.

…why do I feel I have just accomplished something not many dōjutsu wielders have done?

Across the Elemental Nations, nearly all users of all kinds of fancy-eyes-haxing sneezed simultaneously.

Must be just me. Well, it is about late evening, let's introduce the plan and see how it goes.

"Everyone, could I please have your attention?"

The good majority of the women and girls had agreed to go through with my plan, or they did when I showed them a few tricks, like the Rasengan. Needless to say that was enough credibility to convince them. My plan was this; break out and run like all hell.

Simple, right?

…okay stop giving me that look. In theory Kirigakure should be incredibly strapped for ninja forces as they are currently in a civil war. Following? Therefore, if we break out and run, nobody should come after us as they literally can't. They don't have the numbers to do so.

Only issue is that I don't know if those few genin are still hanging around. They are the only wild card in my plan; bandits of these calibre don't deserve to even stand next to an Academy student.

Well, act first, think second, cuddle this cutie third. Ah yes, the little girl who sat in the corner of the cart we were in, equipped with the most devastating puppy-eyes in existence. Can't disappoint anyone at this point anyway.

Let's do this.

Hito had just graduated from the Kirigakure Academy and was allocated to a team. Unfortunately, this team was not new, and he was just the replacement.

It was Hito's first day on the job with his new team, who were considerably stronger than himself. They had apparently 'lost' their comrade after a failed Chūnin exam. It was unspoken, but very clear to him that if he failed he would also mysteriously disappear as well.

Additionally, it didn't help that the Mizukage had a cruel smile on (or so he thought) when he assigned a newly reformed team a C-rank.

All of this culminated into a very nervous wet-behind-the-ears genin.

It was on his turn during his patrol of the camp when he heard suspicious scuffles from the prisoner cage as he passed by. He stopped to observe but…nothing seemed to be out of place?

Hito muttered something about being too high-strung and that everything will be fine. He didn't notice the twenty or so people sneaking right by him under a genjutsu, nor the people who were 'inside' the cage were occasionally flickering among the more solid ones.

He just shrugged and carried on patrolling.

Obliviousness is the best kind of blissfulness.

The first sign that something had gone wrong to Futsu, was that a flare of chakra had appeared in the eastern sector of the small village.

Quickly darting towards the suspicious spike of chakra, he leapt gracefully from roof to makeshift roof. He came face to face with an illusion he dispelled as quickly as he'd arrived. His normally composed face crumpled into an unsightly expression. It seemed that their mission had been compromised. Despite that, his lips curled into a poisonous smile.

It seemed that he had some toys to play with.

"Mayue-sama," one of the older women panted as they ran further and further away from the settlement, "how…how much more do we need to run?"

It had been a short few minutes after I had forcefully opened the lock via a rather half-hearted Rasengan to bite through the flimsy lock. A bit overkill, and maybe not the most discreet choice but whatever.

I briefly considered the possibilities about where we should head next, rather distractedly as I was holding a rather large area genjutsu while moving. My fancy-eyes really helped in casting it, though they didn't make it completely easy.

Only my weirdly good chakra control was keeping up this façade.

Luck wasn't on my side, unfortunately, as a very large hail of shuriken came raining down from the heavens. What, was today's forecast a helping of kunai with a side of shuriken? Count me out.

Even if I could dodge this wave of very pointy objects, my companions could not, and I was stuck in a very bad dilemma. I couldn't very much just up and leave them, you know?

This caused me to come to the realisation that I practically had no defensive jutsu whatsoever, something I will be certainly fixing later on.

But anyway, focusing on the present, we were very much in trouble. I quickly activated my passive Isshoku Me jutsu and turned on my Sharingan to buy some time and think. If you had noticed I called my Sharingan by its actual name, not 'fancy-eyes', 'hax-eyes' or any variant of that.

That's how serious it was.

The colour seeped out from my vision as the world turned grey, the kunai slowing down to just below a sixth of its previous speed.

I hurriedly ran through my admittedly short list of jutsu and think of any way I could slip out of this situation.

Kagebunshin? No, that would just delay the inevitable with that kind of durability.

Rasengan? Might as well be as useful as a pile of rocks with how large the radius in which something gets obliterated; I also don't think I can pull off a Naruto and make an Oodama Rasengan right now either, my version isn't even properly mastered yet!

Bunshin, Shunshin, ditto ditto!

Argh, what should I do!

…wait. What was the limit on Kawarimi again? Pretty sure that Iruka did never say there was a strict limit, but that means it's proportional to chakra spent and the size and distance of what is swapped…

No. It wasn't feasible; I'd probably die before I would even finish swapping half of the people here.

Too late now; it's only about 10 meters away now.

Were there no other options?

…I'll have to gamble it.

I put my hands in the tiger seal and Shunshin'ed to the kunais that were going to hit the nearest girl, and caught them, chucking the now-caught kunai at the other kunai that were descending on our escaping group, changing their trajectory and making them miss.

This happened dozens upon dozens of times per second, showering the small clearing in a bath of sparks. Shunshin, catch, deflect, repeat.

Clink. Thunk. Scrrch.

Again, and again and again.

I wasn't perfect, of course, as I received countless nicks and cuts from each kunai I couldn't make in time. A small price, if you will, for saving these lives. This may be merely things that you have heard before, but I don't just do this to satisfy the masochistic messiah-esque tendencies of Kishimoto's fucked up world, but I do this for my selfish desire; the desire to change things and make this world somewhat better, however small the impact I make.

So I don't need to look over the death and carnage and know that it was all my fault, that I had once again failed.

In the end, when all the waves of glittering black had buried themselves into one thing or another, the clearing looked like someone had blown up a bomb of projectiles, with small windows that were free of kunai.

And I stood in the middle of all of it, half-alive but alive nonetheless. For my troubles I had also gotten a kunai to the shoulder and stomach, which were a teeny-tiny bit of a problem.

…Alright I was bleeding out at a fast pace. It was probably going to be fatal if I didn't do anything.

It also didn't help that I had spent nearly every drop of chakra Shunshining around, despite my abnormally good chakra control; that showed how much I was Shunshining.

Chakra control is essentially a person's control over their Chakra Ratio.

Chakra Ratio is the ratio of physical energy and spiritual energy that is made into chakra; this changes on a person to person basis but if the ratio is off from the optimum ratio, then the excess energy is wasted. For example, if I had an optimum ratio of 1:1, and I put 47%:53%, physical energy and spiritual energy respectively, I would have wasted 6% of my spiritual energies because they had no physical energy to mix with. This excess energy usually turns up as smoke; the more control over your chakra meant less smoke to alert your enemies that you have done something.

This was the useful stuff I learnt in Iruka's class, wonder how much more powerful Naruto could've been if he had just listened. Well, he may have also been constantly sabotaged by the education system because he couldn't properly read basic kanji. When I found out about that, if it weren't Shisui or Itachi to stop me, some chūnin may have became some not-so-alive chūnin.

I think I like this guy even more!

…alright, being honest here, my body was in no kind of shape to be fighting anymore. If anything, I could only rely on relatively average taijutsu to get me past this. My chakra levels didn't allow anything more taxing than that. I also was suffering from severe chakra strain, I could tell.

It was like pipes; overexert them and they will stress and break. The only way to get over this would be to train your chakra network to be able to handle heavy loads, though the chakra coils hold nearly all of a person's chakra at any given time, so that part of the chakra circulatory system will always be most suited to dealing with stresses upon the chakra network. Makes me wonder what insane training Gai and Lee go through to be able to deal with the strains of opening the Hachimon.

Anyhow, the body took time to repair such injuries as mine.

Time I didn't have.

It felt like someone had piled a ton of bricks on every bloody inch of my body. It was no great surprise when I got walloped without me even noticing that someone had been there. This repeated a few times as multiple bruises began to blossom beneath my skin.

My consciousness had started to fade as well.

That wasn't good, not at all.

I stumbled.

No, bad.

Stay awake, delay him enough so that they can get away.

Look here.

He struck me again, looking disappointed. I'm sure I'd be after that grand display of saving over twenty people.

In the end he was just toying with me. Nothing more than a broken figurine.

But I didn't stay down.

Every time I fell, a small voice deeply rooted in my heart spoke a simple phrase again, and again, and again.

"Don't break your promises."

I had promised myself I would do something, didn't I? What am I doing here, being beat around like a rag doll?

Nothing was ever gained from doing nothing.

As I fell for the seventh time, I stopped my descent just before hitting the ground by planting my hand of the ground, using the momentum to whirl around and counterattack when he had his guard down. He staggered after my sloppily performed chakra-enhanced kick slammed against his jaw. That was for the rain of kunai on the innocent people.

I knew that wasn't enough to down someone who was practically in perfect condition, as indicated by his snarling face as he staggered back.

That's okay, I still had one more bone to pick with this guy.

Smiling grimly as I brought my body around with my kick, and his eyes widened, spotting a small spinning ball in my right hand, cocked as if ready to punch him.

"Nighty night."

I slammed the miniaturised Rasengan into his stomach with the last vestiges of my strength, propelling him to smash into the nearest tree, splinters flying everywhere from the force of the impact. That was for the beatdown, asshat. He wasn't getting up from a Rasengan, in any form, unless he could do one better than Kabuto, which I highly doubt.

Stumbling, I squeezed my blurry eyes closed, then opened them in hopes of clearing my swimming vision. Evident from the high-pitched ringing in my ears, it wasn't enough to appease my body though, as it finally gave in and collapsed in a small, mossy clearing.

People swarmed my prone body, who though, I couldn't tell. Oh well, I'm doing this fainting thing a lot lately, maybe I should take a break after this…

And the world went dark.

A/N: Shinobi Dictionary

hitai-ate – Shinobi headband in Naruto. Literally means 'forehead guard'.

hachimon – literally meaning 'Eight Gates'. "The Eight Gates are eight specific tenketsu along the chakra pathway system. The Eight Gates exist in order to limit the flow of chakra within an individual's body. Ordinarily, individuals can use no more than 20% of their body's full potential, the brain's way of protecting the individual from harming their body through overexertion. With training, individuals can learn to remove these limiters, referred to as "opening" the gates." -Naruto Wiki.

'seven times down, eight times up' - "Japanese proverb '七転び八起' (Nanakorobi yaoki), meaning: When life knocks you down, stand back up." - Wikipedia.

I did some super-fast updates with Chap9-10 so gimme a break ;-;. Might go rewatch Naruto Season 1 later to brush up on some canonical knowledge; fanon is getting me confused ;[

- Maki-sensei

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